Posted
by
Hemoson Monday March 19, 2007 @11:48AM
from the get-out-of-my-way dept.

kiwimate writes "A study concludes that people who play car racing games may be more likely to take risks and drive aggressively when driving in real life.
According to the article, "The study appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by the American Psychological Association"." Just because after I play Grand Theft Auto I want to ram other cars does not mean I'm a worse driver. Honest.

Well, there was that time I patronized a hooker, then immediately afterward bludgeoned her to death, and plucked the money I paid her from where it was floating in the air several inches above her slowly vanishing corpse... wait, that was years before GTA came out. Never mind.

If people thought playing computer games would affect your actions in real life, then all those hours of PacMan would have had us running around in darkened rooms listening to repetitive music munching on pills.

"If people thought playing computer games would affect your actions in real life, then all those hours of PacMan would have had us running around in darkened rooms listening to repetitive music munching on pills. "

Heck, in the old days...we had to live with dropping anvils onto people's heads...or aim them towards the edge of a high cliff with a large ACME rocket on their back while on roller skates.

Yup...we had it tough before PacMan had its nefarious influence on us. Looney Tunes was bad enough.....

I played GTA pretty seriously for awhile. The sense of freedom was amazing.

When I first played (and when my wife first played), we tried to obey the traffic laws and stay in the proper lane. After realizing how pointless that was, we were driving on sidewalks, ignoring pedestrians, and laughing with glee when running red lights.

Your brain is very good at unlearning old skills and relearning new ones. The catch is that when doing very similar things, it's easy for one set of skills to bleed into another. Switching from throwing a whiffle ball to a softball requires a period of adjustment. Driving like an insane maniac to a law abiding citizen requires a degree of concentration.

The vast majority of people will likely use caution, focus, and not have any problem at all. Some folks, however, may have difficulty making the switch. Ban all driving games? That seems a bit silly. Banning cell phones or music in cars would likely have a more concrete effect.

Really? The problem I'd have with this is does the brain really collerate holding a controller to driving with a real steering wheel? I guess if you play with a real wheel then there could be some confusion, but to be honest there are so many differences between getting in a real car and playing a video game, I have to manually change gears, have mirrors to check, indicators to turn on....

I can see how playing GTA plants the 'what if...?' seed in my mind...'this traffic is bad, if only I drive on the curb?

Honestly, seriously: there was a moment for me when, after playing a whole lot of GTA3, I was driving around and found myself thinking, "I'm tired of this car. I should go get that guy's car." Not very consciously, I mean. I didn't literally think those words I just typed, but I was driving, saw a nicer car than the one I was driving, and for a split second it went through my head that I should pull him over, yank him the driver out of his car, and drive away leaving my own car behind.

Of course, I didn't actually *do* anything. I just laughed a little to myself, thought, "that's awesome" and kept driving.

I'm not in favor of censoring video games or anything. You don't really know what activities are going to do for people. Maybe playing football would make one guy feel accustomed to violence and more likely to hit someone, while it might give another guy some sort of an outlet which prevents him from being violent. The government shouldn't take over responsibility for deciding which experiences are appropriate for people to have.

On the other hand, let's not pretend that this stuff has no effect. If I play solitaire enough, my mind starts sorting visual information differently. After playing Zelda for a long time, I look at the world differently. It's all having an effect, and you know, maybe sometimes some games have a bad effect on a person's psyche. So, if you're a parent of a teenager who you think can't handle driving safely after playing GTA, don't let them play GTA. Better yet, just don't let them drive at all. I'll tell you something, we are far too insistent that people drive everywhere, even when they're bad drivers, and it's bad all around.

I'm not in favor of censoring video games or anything. You don't really know what activities are going to do for people. Maybe playing football would make one guy feel accustomed to violence and more likely to hit someone, while it might give another guy some sort of an outlet which prevents him from being violent. The government shouldn't take over responsibility for deciding which experiences are appropriate for people to have.

And that, of course, is the key issue. Jack Thompson, et al, want to regulate

The study did show some causation. They used subjects that were both video game players and non video game players. They had them either play a racing game or non racing game. Those who played the racing game showed more agressive behavior (in a formal driving simulator) regardless of their video gaming history.

But doesn't that just mean that the formal driving sim was seen more as a game, instead of a sim? I.e. the "it's only a game" though bleeds into the normally serious situation. They should do real-life driving for comparison instead.

The problem is, in essence you're suggesting that the only experimental result you'd trust is if someone actually conducted an experiment intended to get guys hyped on adrenaline and subsequently injuring / killing people in real life driving! Apart from the clear ethical problems with an experiment that requires risks for non-participants, you can also be practical and take on board the fact that experiments in simulated environments can bring useful and indeed valid results.

Apparently you didn't read the article... there was no "self-selection".The researchers took a group of people, split them up at random. One group was shown racing game footage. Another group was shown non-racing game footage. Then the people were put into what amounted to driving simulators and response time to hazardous situations was assessed.

The group that had been watching racing games drove further "into" hazardous situations before acting to avoid, and other behaviors associated with taking more

I don't know for Racing Game. That seem to me a little extreme since the realism of the racing are far away from the real life.However,

I had the opportunity to do some karting from time to time with colleagues and after 2 hours of karting when you take back your car you really have to think twice while driving.More than one time I was close to naturally 'push' a slower car before me, or was driving more nervously than usual,... and I was not the only one to have such problem. So we bravely decided to alway

They conducted three experiments. The first showed a correlation between risky driving and playing racing games. They explicitly acknowledged that correlation does not establish causality, hence the subsequent experiments.

Until you understand the importance of reading, hold off on criticising others working on the more advanced topics.

And who, according to insurance companies, is the riskiest group? Teenage boys.

I still find myself wanting to take turns faster and change lanes as if no one was really there (no signaling, etc) after playing a few games of Gran Turismo and I'm 28.

Generally I have more control over this impulse than a 16 to 19 year old might have but still the impulse is there. As the numbers of individuals that still play video games continues to increase into the 20/30 age range it *could* have an effect on the driving styles of those individuals past the "teenage boy risky group" you mention.

I still find myself wanting to take turns faster and change lanes as if no one was really there (no signaling, etc) after playing a few games of Gran Turismo and I'm 28.

After playing SOE's PlanetSide [sony.com] for a while, I was driving through a parking lot one day and reflexively swerved to avoid driving over an oil stain (a dark spot on an otherwise mostly clean parking lot).

In Planetside, mines are not visible until you are close to them. If you are driving at full speed, you usually cannot stop fast enough

Ironically, the fact that I am really into race sims (not GTA, but Gran Turismo et al) probably is what saved me in my first accident. I was rear-ended in the right rear at freeway speeds and sent into a spin. If I hadn't already had the muscle memory to recover from spins, I would have probably caused other collisions as opposed to being able to recover. I only ended up doing roughly a 720.

I was judged "not at fault" in the accident, and praised for paying attention in driver's ed...

of note, in my area on the news when a boy crashes a car or dies behind the wheel it is usually just him or at most one other but girls seem to fill the car which makes their fatal crashes even more so troubling.

as for video games leading to it, if theres money to be had a lawyer will find it

In a driving simulator though, if someone put me in one of those I'd feel no responsibility to drive sensibly since I would have no worries about killing people or dying like you have on real roads. In effect it's just a more boring driving game.

It's also a bullshit concept. No driving simulator is like the real thing because none of them can correctly implement the "butt-o-meter" (or as I like to call it, the "butt dyno") that you use while driving. It works like this: The force on your ass (and the rest of you, but one of the best places to feel it is at the interface of seat and ass) informs you as to how much force you're putting on your tires. That tells you how much traction you have available. This is unavailable in driving simulators. Some

The researchers then studied 68 men and found those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game.

Not very compelling to me. They find correlation (which is useless without causation), then find that people who play a racing game then drive more aggressively in another car driving game. Yawn. I'm not saying they're definitely wrong, I'm saying they've failed to convince me. Until they can show causation with actual driving, or a correlation between "thoughts and feelings associated with risk-taking" and actual driving behavior, I don't think they're finished.

watching 'care bears' for an extended period of time will make you a more caring and sensitive person.

Any time i see the 'video games made me do it' excuse, I think that the appropriate sentence should be forced to watch 'Barney' for an entire month. Since the person is so easily influenced, this should work perfectly for rehabilitation.

People who like to drive cars really bloody quickly and dangerously, surprisingly, also like to play computer games where they can drive cars really bloody quickly and dangerously. Other people on the otherhand, who are less interested in killing themselves in flashy cars, prefer other types of games.
Sounds a bit like reverse causation? Really should be a cohort study.

I wish real driving were like video games. I want a car you can total, push "X" and it's totally repaired and back on the road, and somehow you emerged from the fiery wreck fully conscious and without a scratch.

This is why I like NFS 4 on the PC better than a lot more than other racing games. In most racing games, there's no reason to learn how to drive well, because at worst you will lose a few seconds as your car is put back on the track. However, when the damage to your car actually affects the car, then you make it a point not to get into accidents. Going through an 8 lap race is a lot harder when you can't get into an accident. It makes you a lot better at other racing games as you're not always running i

I've seen this after movies too. I remember well seeing "Gone in 60 seconds" (when it came out, long ago) and then watching all the idiots do burn-outs from the theatre and go peeling out. The funny thing was that apparently the cops were aware of this too, so they had some cars strategically placed after the shows ended.

Of course one could still bring up the cause->effect arguement, as it's unclear as to whether or not people drive like idiots due to game/movie influence, or people who drive like idiots like those types of games/movies.

ha ha ha. Guess what? Police package cars haven't been enhanced like that for something like twenty years. The police package basically includes heavier sway bars (SOMETIMES, not always) and the biggest alternator that has the same case as the stock alternator. That's it. The cops add pusher bars and various additional electronics. This makes the car heavier, but no p

Of course, I am reefering to when I see a flower on the side of the road I want to pick it, and add it to my inventory. I swear those little pink flowers look just like Mageroyal. and the bruiseweed looks like bachelor buttons...

... And I don't mean that it's a dupe. Didn't we hear this stuff about games like Grand Theft Auto? IIRC, those who wanted these games banned used the case of Devin Moore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Moore) to illustrate this (it should be noted that he was represented by Jack Thompson)?I don't see hordes of psycho people running around with anti-social behavior that can directly be traced back to video games. If there are people out there who do have anti-social behavior, maybe it's due to the fact

A study has shown that people who are generally behaving badly in trafic are more likely to enjoy games like GTA. Other research has shown that people who are using have had an X-Ray taken of a leg are more likely to have had a broken leg. This clearly shows the dangers of X-Ray imaging.
Statistical Relation != Cause

I'm a keen driver, and a strong advocate of road safety, so I've looked at a fair bit of the research that's available. Most variables that have been found to affect driver attitude are based on something that is happening while they're actually in the car: things like tiredness, drink and drugs obviously have an effect, but so do things like the type (actually, speed) of music you're listening to. (Some groups of drivers also generally exercise better judgement regardless of the immediate circumstances: to find out who, take a look at what counts for/against you when your insurance premium is worked out!)

Then again, perception of speed is also affected by recent experience: think how slow it feels when you come off a high speed road into a town, even if you're doing the limit around town, and compare that with how that limit feels when you're just starting driving and already in town. That's perception rather than attitude and judgement, though.

So while the conclusions here seem plausible, they're also a bit unusual. I saw a story very similar to this a few days ago in the UK media. Anyone know if these are all the same thing, or there's a recent research trend generating several sets of results in quick succession?

Yes, I remember all those years ago when I first started driving and 45mph felt frighteningly fast. A couple of decades later it feels frightenly slow. In a couple more decades it'll feel frightenly fast again.

I always have to make a mental adjustment after playing driving games. Of course, I also have to make a mental adjustment after playing Katamari Darmacy. For a couple hours after playing I always have this urge to run into the other cars so I can roll them up. Strangely I have thus far been able to

I concur. I believe there is an effect. Just after Gran Turismo was big on the PS1, I was driving home in the rain, quite possibly driving a little too fast. On a corner I got the car into a four-wheel skid and instantly "fixed it" and got things under control.

It was 30 seconds later that I realized what I'd just subconsciously done. Granted in this case the game proved to be a positive experience, but to me it shows that they do have an affect on your habits, good or bad.

Most variables that have been found to affect driver attitude... things like the type (actually, speed) of music you're listening to.

I can certainly vouch for this one. I typically listen to my music at ~140% of normal speed (personal preference - it turns trance into dance, and dance into, well, really fast dance). I can't do this while driving, as it screws with my sense of time (and therefore speed). I find myself driving faster, without realizing I'm doing it.

We could live in a world without excitement. A world in which we are not stimulated or thrilled. A world in which we could only watch movies or play games approved by the Flanders family of the Simpsons. There will be unbalanced people who will be inspired by what they watch. So instead of collecting cat skulls, they pretend they're the hero of GTA. Or Manhunt. Or Barbie Horse Adventures.

Note that they found a correlation between driving fast and people who play racing games. Maybe people who like to drive fast can't drive as fast as they want, so they pop in a racing game simulater. As far as the shooter game comment, most young men are aggressive to one extent or another. If someone blows off some steam by playing Halo 3, I would prefer that to them blowing off someone's head in real life.

I'm a better driver after I play video games. I learned 90% of what I know about cars from Gran Turismo 3.
I can see the lines of a turn, can apply the use of braking and acceleration better, and I am better at avoiding other drivers and retaining awareness of my surroundings.
I think bad drivers should play more racing simulators and stop doing so many studies.

It's nice to have some empirical backing for this, but it's kinda obvious that learning to drive in an imaginary world with no physical trauma and unrealistic laws of physics introduces some habits that aren't conducive to safe driving in the real world.

My cousin bought a simple car racing game targeted for very small kids. His son, a five year old, has never done any games other than Reader Rabbit before. First time he tried it, he eagerly took the control, shot off from the starting point crashed straight into some building and the screen showed a completely wrecked car. The boy started crying, "I broke the car!". Small children are enthused by very mundane things. That boy would play for hours with his video game console's "select language" menu item a

True. I played a good few hours of Colin McRae rally, and then went out for a drive in my Scooby. I suddenly realised that I was driving as I had been, in front of my PC with steering-wheel and pedals, except it was on the quiet evening roads of $country. Quite scary really, although I was ultra-tuned, and alert.

"The researchers then studied 68 men and found those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game."

Oh man - you mean, after playing a game where you're rewarded for driving recklessly, the same gamers drove a little recklessly IN ANOTHER GAME?

SHOCKING.

The end conclusion is totally nonsensical.

"The question of age restrictions, legally or voluntary, should be discussed not only for "shooter" games but also for [racing] games, which have an impact on traffic safety," Kubitzki said.

The research didn't prove that. Correlation != Causality. Why do so many researchers have a problem with this?

What constitutes as bad driving? Driving over the speed limit? hell, nearly everyone does that! Switching lanes without a turn signal or, worse yet, just switching lanes like a madman? That's been happening long before videogames. How about the older lady in the giant SUV that doesnt know the meaning of "right of way?" I'm sure she's never played a videogame in her life.

Bad drivers make for bad drivers, not videogames. You might be a little desensitized if you play racing sims or games that reward reckles

For most people "good driving" means "The particular way I drive." Drive slow? Slow drivers are good drivers. Drive fast? Fast drivers are good drivers. Drive carefully? Careful drivers are good drivers. Drive recklessly? "Daring" drivers are good drivers.Nearly everyone thinks they are a better than average driver. They aren't.

Bad drivers have certainly been around long before video games. Hell, I'm sure there were Roman charioteers who yelled at other charioteers, "Learn to drive, ya moron!" That does not

I quote:"A study concludes that people who play car racing games may be more likely to take risks and drive aggressively when driving in real life."

Well yeah, people who play tennis MAY be more likely to molest small children but that's a pretty big may. Research that needs to resort to "may" often suggests that it's actually rather inconclusive but would like to make itself sound important anyway so that sites like Slashdot post it.

My driving skills have improved since doing all the training that Gran Turismo makes you do.

I can drive faster, but also much better, and I'm much more aware of what my car is and is not capable of.

Of course, I recognize that my car and the roads are more variable and probably less ideal than most of the simulations,
and the ramifications of mistakes are much higher. So I leave bigger margins. I guess other people maybe don't have that
viewpoint. Maybe they would have been reckless drivers anyway.

Oh, you are too lazy? Then I shall help you out. Yes, they ruled that out by taking people who had never played video games, giving them a driving test, having them play the games, and take another driving test.

Sorry, I know you wanted to feel like you were smarter than these scientists and had, like, totally thought of something they hadn't. Maybe next time.

I'm not going to say much, but I will tell you it was about the same time Need For Speed Hot Pursuit was still new that I found out a 1985 Honda Accord could survive city dumpsters & 1-2 feet of air under the tires.

I don't know why GTA is always mentioned when somebody talks about games involving cars...yes it's a driving game, but there's a big difference between driving a car to mow down people and driving a car to win a race. The former is just silly and uses the car as a vehicle (pun intended) to drive (pun intended also) a story or a plot. The latter is, depending on the game, a true test of how driving is supposed to be done, or not done.

True story, as it just happened a couple of months ago: For the first time in my life my car severely fishtailed on me and without ever having experienced it before in real life, I knew what to do in that I had slammed enough rally cars into the snow in various games like GT4 to know "oh, when the car goes like this, I should do that..." and I translated my controller movements into real turns of the wheel. And it worked! I got out of it and kept going.

In this case I feel like my time with GT4 made me a better driver because I recognized a situation I had never experienced in real life but had so many times in the game that I was able to "figure it out". I'm not even going to pretend I'm ready to take an Aston-Martin Vanquish out on the Nurenburg, but I get the difference between "real" driving and "fantasy ha-ha no big deal if I crash a $600k car into the wall at 200mph" type.

Frankly, if I really had a Vanquish, I'd be too nervous about getting it into an accident that I doubt I'd ever leave the garage.

... they put people in a fairly realistic driving game where they were perfectly safe from harm and encouraged them to drive badly.

They then put them in another driving simulator where they were also perfectly safe and they drove worse than those who hadn't played the video game.

At not time did they put them in a situation where their driving may have had actual consequences to themselves or others, but they taught them it was fun and safe to drive recklessly in a video game and then put them in front of another video game? Why am I not suprised...?

The study also found that people who frequently play car racing games are more likely to drive late-model Japanese subcompacts, and modify these vehicles with such embellishments as randomly placed stickers, ugly and near-useless bolt-on aftermarket spoilers, shorter suspension coils, chrome tailpipes, neon undercarriage lighting, and highly reflective aftermarket rims.

Interestingly, no actual performance gains are realized from such modifications.

Psychology isn't science, anyway. Psychiatry (which actually requires an MD), Neurology, etc. is generally scientific. But Psychology is pseudo-science, designed to fill the gap in a liberal arts education after they removed the old-fashion "Bible Study" or "Ethics" courses from the ciriculum.Research from psychologists is like research from creationists - Technically, we shouldn't discount their research based on who they are, but in reality it is almost always flawed. As a person who lives in a world wher

there was a period of my life i played doom for hours a day, every day, for months on end (endlessly downloading free mods)and, i am an avid gun control advocate. for example, i think the line "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a hilarious example of propaganda, because it conveniently forgets that a gun is not neutral technology: it is designed with a specific purpose in mind, that enables people to easily express murderous will in a way that without easy access to guns, they would not be able

i am perfectly happy to backtrack and say that all of my words should only apply to handguns as you say, not the nebulous concept of a firearm, which can include things like rifles for hunting deer, etc. because my original point was to have people look closely at what a tech was designed for: it's intent. rifles are clearly for hunting deer. handguns are clearly for killing people. so your point is well taken, and i adjust my argument accordingly, thank you for pointing that out

After a day flying down the slopes or railing through twisty, rocky singletrack, I think I'd be much more prone to 'risky driving' than after playing some video game that does nothing to put you in the element. After a day of *actually* dealing with speed and dangerous conditions on much less stable 'vehicles' you tend to be a bit more confident on a relatively tame road.

And the WRX really does need to be properly driven every now and then;-)

Definitely not GTA, GTA has the shittiest racing system ever included in a game. The checkpoints are retarded. If GTA made people go out and act like GTA then it would lead to lots of intentional rammings (not to mention murder, carjacking, burglary, and all-around thuggery.) I think that this is quite plausible; however, it's not the law. I actually drive SLOWER than I did before I became a Gran Turismo junkie, but it really taught me to follow a line, to preload, etc etc. I think a lot more about what the

I think that this is quite plausible; however, it's not the law. I actually drive SLOWER than I did before I became a Gran Turismo junkie, but it really taught me to follow a line, to preload, etc etc. I think a lot more about what the suspension is doing, for example, when I make a turn than I did before.

Perhaps it's the other way around. Perhaps people who are dangerous drivers are attracted to games that allow one to be a dangerous driver? It seems pretty obvious to me. I love how people fail to see the fact that it COULD work the other way around when trying to link video game behavior to real life behavior. Why can't it be that, if you like a certain thing in life, you might seek that thing out in a game instead of the game affecting your life?

Apparently this study was spurned from interviews in Portland, Oregon. [youtube.com] I don't think they've mastered the art of drifting through corners.

I think you meant "spawned" instead of "spurned".

I'm cognizant of how I feel after playing hours of Burnout 3, but I haven't felt compelled to cause major pileups, run people off the road, or drift around corners. I've never found myself racing under an Interstate overpass thinking, "Checkpoint!"

However, I have felt the urge to jockey for the most favored position at

The article didn't just study if gamers were more likely to agressively drive. They also used individuals who were not games and had them play either a race car game or a control game. Those playing the race car game had more risky behavior in a more formal driving simulator than those who played the control game.